Judges
Chapter 15
1 After some time, during wheat harvest, Samson brought a young goat to his wife and said, “I will go to my wife’s room.” But her father wouldn’t let him enter.
2 Her father said, “I really thought you hated her, so I gave her to your friend. Isn’t her younger sister more beautiful? Please take her instead.”
3 Samson said about them, “Now I will be less at fault than the Philistines, even though I upset them.”
4 Samson caught three hundred foxes, tied their tails together in pairs, and put a torch between each pair of tails.
5 After he lit the torches, he released them into the Philistines’ growing grain, and they burned up the stacks and the growing grain, along with the vineyards and olive trees.
6 Then the Philistines asked, “Who did this?” They were told, “Samson, the Timnite’s son-in-law, because he took his wife and gave her to his friend.” So the Philistines went and burned her and her father to death.
7 Samson told them, “Even though you did this, I will get revenge on you, and then I’ll stop.”
8 He struck them hard, causing many to die, then went and lived on top of Etam rock.
9 Then the Philistines moved in, camped in Judah, and spread out in Lehi.
10 The men of Judah asked, “Why have you come to fight us?” They replied, “We’ve come to capture Samson and to do to him what he did to us.”
11 Three thousand men from Judah went up to the top of the rock Etam and said to Samson, “Don’t you know that the Philistines rule over us? What have you done to us?” He replied, “I did to them what they did to me.”
12 They told him, “We have come to tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines.” Samson said to them, “Promise me that you won’t attack me yourselves.”
13 They said to him, “No, we won’t kill you. But we will tie you up tightly and give you to them.” Then they tied him with two new ropes and led him up from the rock.
14 When he arrived at Lehi, the Philistines yelled at him; but God’s Spirit rushed into him strongly, and the ropes on his arms turned as weak as burnt flax, and the bindings fell off his hands.
15 He found a fresh donkey jawbone, reached out, took it, and killed a thousand men with it.
16 Samson said, “I used a donkey’s jawbone to kill a thousand men.”
17 After he finished speaking, he threw the jawbone from his hand and named that place Ramathlehi.
18 He was very thirsty, and prayed to God, saying, “You have given your servant this great victory; must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of those who are not circumcised?”
19 God split open a space in the jawbone, and water flowed out. After he drank, his strength returned, and he felt better. So he named that place Enhakkore, which is still in Lehi today.
20 He was Israel’s leader for twenty years during the time of the Philistines.